BETHPAGE, N.Y. - Baylor junior tight end Jordan Najvar has been placed on the 33-member preseason watch list for the 2012 John Mackey Award, released Tuesday by the Nassau County Sports Commission.

The Mackey Award is given annually to the nation's most outstanding collegiate tight end, and the award recipient is selected by vote of the John Mackey Selection Committee. The 2012 award winner will be presented live on Dec. 6 at The Home Depot College Football Awards Show on ESPNU. Semifinalists will be released Nov. 12, and finalists will be announced on Nov. 19.

A Spring, Texas, native, Najvar is in entering his third season with the Baylor football program. He began his collegiate career at Stanford, where he sat out as a redshirt in 2009 before transferring to Baylor. While sitting out the 2010 season to satisfy NCAA transfer rules, Najvar earned Baylor's Co-Offensive Bear Squad Award for work on the scout team.

In his first season of competition, Najvar played in all 13 games and made seven starts for Baylor as a sophomore in 2011. He earned honorable mention All-Big 12 honors after leading all Baylor tight ends with 15 receptions for 146 yards and two touchdowns. Najvar recorded a 14-yard TD reception in the season-opening win against No. 14 TCU, and he had a 13-yard TD catch in the win over No. 5 Oklahoma.

Najvar had a career-high three catches for 21 yards in the season's fourth game at Kansas State, and he made his career-first start in the fifth game against Iowa State. He started seven of the Bears' last nine games and had a career-high 25 receiving yards on two catches in the eighth game against Missouri.

Najvar is one of two Big 12 Conference players on the preseason watch list, joining Kansas senior Mike Ragone. Najvar is also one of only 11 non-seniors among the 33 candidates, and he is one of three players representing the state of Texas on the watch list, along with Rice's Luke Wilson and Texas State's Chase Harper.

The John Mackey Award is a member of the National College Football Awards Association (NCFAA). The NCFAA was founded in 1997 as a coalition of the major collegiate football awards to protect, preserve and enhance the integrity, influence and prestige of the game's predominant awards.